
Experienced Entrepreneur and Technologist
Greater Chicago Area

Experienced Entrepreneur and Technologist
Greater Chicago Area
Startup oriented technologist with substantial experience in all phases of IT governance, product development and software engineering. Focused on using technology to solve real problems and reducing friction of how technology affects everyday life.
Health Care, Analytics, Document Management, Finance, Compliance Services, Airline, Advertising & Marketing, Asset Management & Tracking, Social & Media Networks and Logistics.
(Computer Software industry)
November 2008 — Present (9 months)
(Computer Software industry)
September 2008 — Present (11 months)
Creator of flagship product that publishes sports statistical information via a REST based web API and Linked Data to the web. Data is made accessible to 3rd parties for integration and consumption. Extensive use of REST, HTTP, ETags, SEO, caching and other scalability requirements.
Creator and author of company blog properties, including sports related blogs and news sites. Includes site creation, marketing and design, as well as all SEO related needs.
Liaison for all clients. Primary functions include deliverable creation, initial designer and architect. Also filling senior developer role when needed. Responsible for the creation of several Long Tail social networks, including P2P media social network and User-Generated Content social network.
(Privately Held; Publishing industry)
April 2008 — Present (1 year 4 months)
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)
May 2006 — September 2008 (2 years 5 months)
While reporting directly to the CTO, led the implementation of agile processes, using SCRUM for project management and XP for engineering and delivery. Introduced daily scrums to engineering team. Led yearly retrospectives for team and company reviews. Lead contact for several 3rd party vendors and partners. Responsible for external requirements gathering and 3rd party integration. Added code coverage, unit & integration tests and CI to code base. Implemented robust change management process for production deployment. SaaS company in the asset tracking industry. Product line was written in ASP.NET, with a supporting mobile app written in AppForge Environment.
Responsible for development and maintenance of the flagship ASP.NET product, as well as new development of rental calculation and reporting infrastructure. Built custom REST based web services framework for 3rd party integration. Led implementation & migration to .NET 3.5, ASP.NET 3.5 and MS AJAX.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)
February 2006 — May 2006 (4 months)
Responsible for all aspects of engineering, including product architecture, team management, development and deployment support.
Responsible for the pilot design, architecture and implementation of a 3rd party server implementation, intended to support all customers. Involved with capacity planning and deployment / ops direction.
(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Management Consulting industry)
July 2005 — March 2006 (9 months)
Responsible for the mentoring and training of several junior developers, as well as being the day to day technical lead and project architect.
Participated in the architecture and development of an initial SOA implementation for a global corporation. This spike would be the basis of an SOA architectural assessment to determine the viability of utilizing an SOA architectural style throughout the rewrite of its marquee medical system product.
Also provided guidance and construction support for a EAI product implementation to be used to integrate with SAP, with the plan to use the product as part of a larger SOA implementation. Handled all aspects of delivery, including requirements gathering, prescribing architecture, constructions, and testing.
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry)
July 2004 — August 2005 (1 year 2 months)
Led project scope definition, requirements analysis, and lead technical architecture creation for several projects. Regularly reported to project stakeholders, including senior executive teams. Designed and developed several key pieces of company infrastructure. Defined and estimated scope and delivery cycles for product development, which included presenting requirements and project scope to board comprised of representatives from parent companies. Led several technical assessments in preparation for major rewrite initiatives.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)
December 2002 — July 2004 (1 year 8 months)
While reporting directly to the CTO, responsibilities included leading migration to .NET throughout the entire company. Spearheaded adoption of agile processes, including extreme programming ( XP ). Performed various project & product management responsibilities, including scoping versions, managing requirements, and defining architectural vision.
Developed web service management platform for application construction. Platform utilized SOAP, WSDL, XML, and .NET Web Services, as well as various WS-* specs, including WS-Attachments & DIME.
Technical interviewer for new members to team, including full time employees & consultants. Responsible for mentoring other developers in various aspects of software engineering, including design techniques and .NET knowledge
Evaluated and made recommendations for various tools & processes to be used throughout the engineering team. This includes 3rd party vendor selection and SDLC process development.
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; XRX; Information Technology and Services industry)
July 2002 — December 2002 (6 months)
Responsible for mentoring and training an entire development team in software concepts, ranging from OOP, .NET Framework, XML, and the software development process. Responsibilities and tasks included :
• Instituted new, agile development process for all software development.
• Organized team based collaboration with MS Project and MS Project Server.
• Responsible for collaborating between the project manager, customers, and the team for effective and efficient software development.
• Use UML for all software design documentation and diagramming.
• Taught training program for the development team. Topics discussed in detail include: .NET Framework, Object-Oriented Programming, Customer interaction, and utilizing a software development process.
• Organized daily stand up meetings between project manager and development team.
(Non-Profit; 201-500 employees; Hospital & Health Care industry)
April 2002 — July 2002 (4 months)
Part of a team that ported 40 web applications from a ASP and Cold Fusion architecture to a J2EE architecture. All applications utilized the Netscape iPlanet suite of applications, including iPlanet Portal Server and Application Server.
Individually responsible for re-writing 15 sites to use the new interwoven content management system. Extensive experience with all levels of content creation in TeamSite 5.5 on a UNIX Solaris platform. This includes DataDeploy, OpenDeploy and Presentation Template creation. Designed and development of all interactive portions of 15 of the web sites. All portions were written using a combination of JSP and tag libraries.
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; BEAS; Computer Software industry)
October 2000 — November 2001 (1 year 2 months)
Part of a core team that developed an Accelerated Training Program for an aggressive crash course on BEA Weblogic 6.0 for internal use. Program was a 2-day program that utilized all aspects of development and testing with both lectures and lab exercises. Topics included clustering and session replication.
While deployed as a consultant to a company in the banking industry, worked with the Unix Systems Team to install, configure, and tune over 30 Weblogic/iPlanet/Java applications in system test, user acceptance, and production environments running Solaris 2.6. Streamlined the setup and administration of over 15 J2EE enterprise web applications. Applications were deployed in user acceptance and production environments utilizing clustering for front-end and back-end implementation.
(Computer Software industry)
June 2000 — October 2000 (5 months)
Involved in the maintenance and design of an enterprise level, object-oriented framework written in Java. This framework is utilized within over 25 enterprise applications, across many companies. Made inroads to legitimatize Extreme Programming as a viable alternative to the Rational Unified Process, including starting up an event called OpenHaus, with topic was the viability of Extreme Programming.
Managed a mixed Solaris and Windows NT Server network, supporting several dozen NT, Windows 9x, and MacOS clients. Implemented Apache Server for web site hosting, and Sendmail for e-mail exchange. Maintained and administered router, CSU/DSU, and firewall hardware for T1 Internet connection. Administered and configured Checkpoint Firewall/1 on Solaris 2.6 for Internet security.
Worked with BEA Systems upon acquisition of Bauhaus Technologies to migrate entire company infrastructure into BEA Systems standard infrastructure.